The insurance giant made the announcement as it published estimated claims from the two disasters.

The 8.8 quake in February killed 486 people and ravaged cities and industries such as forestry and steel-smelting.

Net claims from the disaster would be about Â£976million, said Lloydâs.

And as pressure continued to mount on BP to plug the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon explosion off Louisiana, the insurer said the current estimate for claims was £209m to £418m.

âClearly these events have had a significant impact on both Chilean and US coastal communities, as well as a severe environmental cost in the case of the oil spill off Louisiana,â said Lloydâs chief executive Richard Ward.

Estimates about how much oil has gushed since the rig sunk after a explosion on the platform on April 20 have varied wildly. The most conservative estimates put the total at seven million gallons so far.

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BP, Britainâs second-biggest company, previously put the rate at 5,000 barrels a day but some experts have said it could be up to 20 times higher.

Greenpeace yesterday accused the company of âsignificantly underplayingâ the problem.

Spokesman Charlie Kronick said it was likely to be âat least as bigâ as Americaâs worst spill. That was the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, in which 11million gallons of oil spilled from a tanker.

BP was yesterday deciding whether to use a tricky procedure called âtop killâ , designed to choke off the oil spill.

It involves force feeding heavy-drilling mud and cement on to the leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.